The Day Before Forever (4 page)

“Would it be possible for us to buy them?”

“Certainly.” The young man reached into the pack he had slung around his waist and pulled out a stack of red tickets. “Two?”

“Yes, two.”

“Twenty-four pounds, please.”

Henley already had the money out.

“Thank you. Have a good day.” The young man handed us the tickets as we moved past him. “You'll see the best views from the top floor!” he called over his shoulder.

“Expensive . . . ,” Henley mumbled.

“You know money is different in this time compared to yours? Inflation and all that?” This still was expensive. But not as much as Henley was probably thinking.

The seats by the boat's windows were all taken, and still more people stood near them to see the views.

We found a narrow spiral staircase at the far end of the boat. I steadied myself by gripping the railing on either side; I could feel the water swaying the boat under us.

A blast of cool air hit my face as we reached the top of the stairs.

The second floor of the boat was open, without a roof. We passed rows of metal benches crammed with people.

“I'm not sure if we can find seats here,” Henley said.

I craned my neck to look for an empty section of bench, but it looked like Henley was right.

“Ouch.” I felt a sharp pang of pain from my left foot.

I looked down to see a sandal-clad foot on top of mine.

“Oh, I'm so sorry!” A platinum blonde was talking to me. She sounded American. “There's just so many people on this boat. It's kinda hard to know where to step. You okay?” She looked down at my foot. “Love, love,
love
your leather flats.” She squinted up at me, as she was significantly shorter than I was. “Love your boho style in general.”

The woman had short pale hair barely reaching her chin. She was wearing all black, which matched the harsh black eyeliner
ringing her gray eyes. At least she seemed more cheerful than the way she dressed.

“Boho?” I said before I could stop myself. Had I just embarrassed myself? Was that a term I should have known?

“Yeah, the white shift and all. Very boho chic,” the woman said. She glanced at Henley. “Your boyfriend too. Love the matching aesthetic.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Henley grin at the word “boyfriend.” It was a funny word when used for us. We'd been through so much—life and death, quite literally—that it seemed a trivial word to use to define our relationship. But if he wasn't my “boyfriend,” what else could he be?

“You guys looking for seats up here?” the woman asked.

“We were,” Henley said. “But it looks pretty full. Everyone wants to sit up top.”

“It's like those double-decker buses London's famous for.” The woman laughed. “I'm Alanna, by the way.” She stuck out her hand, first to me then to Henley.

“Henley,” Henley said, and I followed suit with my name.

“I'm sitting over there with Peter if you want to join us. We're taking up a lot more room than we really need. You see, Peter likes to stretch his legs out and—”

“If you don't mind, that would be great.” Henley looked to me for confirmation.

I didn't know why she was being so nice. Maybe we just looked lost?

We followed Alanna to the back of the boat—the second to last row, to be precise.

A man with blond dreads lifted his head as we came closer.
He took a long look first at Henley, then me, before he nodded hello in our direction.

“Making more friends already?” the man said to Alanna. He also sounded American. I was surprised how many Americans were on this boat. I guess a boat tour of the Thames UK was a popular travel destination for Americans.

“You know it.” She laughed.

“I'm Peter,” the man said. I saw that he was wearing a faded gray shirt with the logo of some band I couldn't place.

Alanna answered for us before we could open our mouths. “This is Rebecca and Henley. They're from—where did you say you were from? The States?”

Henley's eyes opened wide. “How did you know?”

“Your accents, silly,” Alanna said. “So I guessed right? Do sit down.” She pointed at the far seats closest to the side of the boat.

There was a newspaper spread out on the seats. No doubt they had been trying to save them for Peter to stretch out, so I picked it up. I sat first, Henley next to me, and then Alanna next to Peter.

“So where in the States are you from?” Alanna asked.

“New York,” I said. “How about you both?”

“We're from all over, but most recently we just came in from Australia. Right near Perth, if you know where that is.”

Henley solemnly nodded, and I wondered if that was because he knew where Perth was or because he was trying to look attentive.

Henley started asking Alanna questions, and they fell into a conversation about the native animals of Australia—wombats
and all. I opened the newspaper.

June 17, 2016

I had known as soon as we arrived that this was the future. But a whole 489 years from where we had started? I had no idea.

I looked up to see Peter studying my face closely.

I couldn't let anything slip. I folded the newspaper and put it in my lap to take with me. It could give us valuable information.

“What's up?”

I didn't know where to begin answering that question. Everything “was up,” as he put it. Henley and I didn't know where we were going, what we were going to do . . . Everything was a mess.

“This was a terribly last-minute trip,” I settled for saying.

“You don't say?” Peter had a low, mellow way of talking. Not much emotion slipped out. “A traveling-on-a-budget sorta thing?”

“Sure . . . ,” I said. A stolen credit card and limited cash counted as traveling on a budget, right?

“Did you guys at least figure out where you're staying the night?”

I looked at Henley. He was still engrossed in his conversation with Alanna on the natural diet of dingoes.

“Not yet,” I answered.

“If you're not set on something too central, there's a hostel Alanna and I are staying at. It's not the ritziest thing, but it's not bad at all either.”

“Yes!” Alanna chimed in. “You
have to
stay with us! . . . That is if you don't have a place to stay already?”

Henley shook his head.

“Then it's settled!” Alanna clapped her hands together like a child. “It'll be like one big slumber party.”

Henley's brows were slightly raised. Getting too close to people made him wary. In that way, he was exactly like his mother, Miss Hatfield. But unlike Miss Hatfield, I guessed it made Henley wary because he didn't like to lie to others. With Miss Hatfield, she had only been thinking about herself and her survival.

TWO

AS WE WALKED
the streets from the river to the hostel Alanna and Peter were leading us to, I couldn't help but ask myself why they were being so nice to us. It was mostly Alanna, but it was Peter too. While Henley walked ahead, chatting with Alanna about which sights they had already seen in England, Peter walked beside me.

“Sometimes it takes a bit to get used to her,” Peter said, looking ahead at Alanna. “She doesn't know it, but she can be a bit . . . much.”

I smiled. So I wasn't the only one who was taken aback by her openness that occasionally bordered on bluntness.

“She's just one of those naturally outgoing, naturally friendly people.” Peter shrugged. “I was never like that, so we get along.”

“Counterintuitive, don't you think?” I said.

“Opposites attract, right? Our personalities don't crash into each other.” Peter twisted one of his dreads as we rounded a
corner. “What about you and Henley? You're probably like that too.”

“We do come from very different backgrounds,” I admitted. “Worlds away, really.”

“It's amazing how we can find common ground with those we love,” Peter said.

“The hostel's not far from here. I promise!” Alanna called over her shoulder.

I assured her Henley and I didn't mind the walk. “We're getting to see more of London,” I said.

“When did you get in, anyway?” Alanna slowed down to walk with Peter and me.

I looked at Henley. I wasn't sure how much he had already told her.

“This morning,” I said, hoping Henley hadn't given her a different answer. He nodded, and I relaxed. So he had more or less told her the same thing.

“Alanna was telling me that she and Peter had done a similar trip before,” Henley said. “Backpacking with barely anything more than the clothes on their backs.” He looked at me intently as he spoke, and I could tell he was feeding me information.

“It was such fun!” Alanna ran her fingers through the short ends of her hair. “Of course, it was in Tibet for a summer and
soooo
much cheaper than London. It's a little harder to survive and travel with very little in the middle of an expensive city like London. But same idea. You two are just more adventurous than we were.”

More adventurous if you counted traveling in time . . .

“It's so much more liberating than traveling with a set plan,”
Alanna went on. “You can experience life more fully. There's something about trading what you have and living on necessities only . . . Speaking of which . . . keeping track of time is important, but what are you doing with that clock?” Alanna was gesturing toward the golden clock that Henley was holding.

I saw Henley instinctively hunch over it.

“It's not that I have any problem with it,” Alanna said quickly. “But it was one of the first things I noticed about you, and . . .”

“Oh, we're just keeping it for the time being,” I quickly said.

Alanna raised her brows. I held my breath.

“We found the clock in a store here. I collect vintage things, and Rebecca likes to decorate our new place with them,” Henley said. “We want to ship it home, but we haven't had the chance yet. Her mother wants her to go all modern with the new place, but you know . . . there's charm in older things.”

Alanna cracked a smile, and I finally exhaled. “Ah, now I know how that feels,” she said to me. “My mother and I always had different tastes—”

“When you see Alanna and her mother together, it's hard to imagine that one created the other,” Peter said.

“That's not nice, Peter!” Alanna said, but she giggled like a schoolgirl.

“Not nice doesn't mean it's not true,” Peter said.

“We probably should get a backpack or something to store the clock in, though,” I started. “Henley, we're probably also going to need a change of clothes soon . . .”

I hoped he was following my train of thought.

“There are little boutiques all around here,” Alanna said.

“Perfect.” I looked at Henley to see if he understood.

We could use the credit card—the
stolen
credit card, I reminded myself—to buy clothing and such. We had to do it sooner rather than later, before the card was reported stolen and was frozen. Clothing didn't sound that important—in fact, it almost sounded silly and frivolous, but I knew that the first step in blending in was looking like we fit the time period. And we needed to blend in, not to be found. We didn't need a lot. Just enough to start making our way.

“Let's stop at the next shop then,” Henley said.

“If it's the next one you're after, it doesn't get any closer than that.” Alanna pointed across the street.

Sure enough, there was a small shop with a mannequin in the window and a sign promising to donate a percentage of all profits to a children's charity. At least the money was going to a good cause, even if it wasn't exactly our money to begin with.

A bell rang as we opened the door and entered the little store. There were rows of racks and boxes with mismatched clothing seemingly thrown over them. Velvet was tossed in with chiffon. Skirts were hung with suspenders.

Behind the back counter, there was an old woman whose stature seemed proportional to the size of the store. She was reading and didn't make a move to get up. She only looked up briefly enough to smile at us before going back to her book.

“What did you need to get?” Alanna asked me.

“For starters, a bag would be nice. Something big enough to carry everything.”

Alanna walked the perimeter of the store, slowly taking everything in. I watched her as she surveyed the wares.

She walked over to a green plastic bin in the corner before reaching in and grabbing a neon backpack in each hand. “What about matching backpacks?” she said.

I tried to laugh off the absurdly bright backpacks she held in each hand. Blending in would be impossible with bags that much of an eyesore.

“You know, when Peter and I went to Greece a while ago, we got matching backpacks,” Alanna said. “We even got our names embroidered on them, isn't that right, Peter?”

“Yeah, sure” was all that came out of Peter.

He didn't look too thrilled about the concept of matching backpacks either. It must have been another thing Alanna had talked him into.

“Let's just pick up one backpack.” The neon ones were the only backpacks in sight, so I settled for a bright-green one. As long as it would fit the clock and a few other things, it would have to do. “And some clothes . . .”

Alanna perked up at the mention of clothes. “Oh, wonderful! What type of clothing?”

“Um . . .” I was tempted to just say “anything,” but that would probably come off like I was second-guessing everything in this time period. I didn't know how I was supposed to act or what was seen as acceptable.

“Let's try to get something very
you
,” Alanna said. I didn't know what that meant, but I was thankful she was leading the way. “Something casual,” she said, rummaging through the racks. “Something fun . . .”

“Uh, whatever you think is best,” I said.

Peter chuckled. “Probably not the best idea to say that.”

Henley was standing with Peter against the wall. He already had clothing under his arm. I was amazed he had been able to pick something out so quickly.

Alanna shushed Peter. “This is the fun part.”

I left her to sort through the boxes of clothing while I took in the other items sold in the store. There was costume jewelry hanging in the back. I found a pair of child's sneakers that looked secondhand. I wondered where all this stuff came from. Wandering travelers who had to sell their things to move on to a new place? People who are done with a certain stage in their lives and don't just want to throw away their things? Maybe even people who wanted to get rid of old memories?

“Oh, look, Rebecca!” Alanna was already onto the next thing. “Maxi skirts!”

“Maxi skirts?” I examined the bunches of fabric Alanna had grabbed.

“Long, billowy maxi skirts.” Alanna paused. “Don't these kinda look like the dress you're wearing now? A little last season . . . Of course yours is better and much more stylish . . .”

I guessed they used to be in fashion. But Alanna had moved on again.

“What do you think of this?” Alanna held up a black dress that looked as lacy and short as a slip.

I glanced at Henley, wondering if he'd be comfortable with me wearing something like that. I had grown used to seeing those styles when I was in the twenty-first century with Miss Hatfield, but Henley was from a much more conservative time period, after all. Even underwear in 1904 hadn't been this revealing! But it
was
a different time with different rules. And how I dressed
myself
was
my choice. Miss Hatfield would have sniffed at the so-called dress with disdain, but I nodded.

Alanna looked pleased with herself. “And this?” She held up a short shirt that looked like it would fit a child better than it would fit me. “The crop top comes with a matching skirt that I think would be so cute!” The skirt she held up was unsurprisingly equally short.

“Why not?” I said. “But maybe I should get a pair of these too.” I pulled a pair of jeans from a bin that looked like they would fit.

“Do you want to try these on?” Alanna lifted the bundle of clothing she now held.

I looked toward the back of the room, tucking the newspaper I still had under my arm. It didn't look like there were any changing rooms.

“I'm fine,” I said. “Let's just get these.”

I took the now rumpled clothing from her arms and walked to the desk at the back of the store. I made sure to add the neon-green backpack to the pile.

“Finally done?” Henley joined me at the desk, leaving Peter and Alanna talking softly out of earshot. He put the clothing he was holding on the pile on the desk.

The older woman put down her book. “Will this be all?”

Craning my neck, I tried to catch a glimpse of what she was reading. It looked like a mystery of some sort.

“Yes,” Henley responded.

The woman turned her back to get a bag ready for our purchases.

“No matter the time period, you always take a long time to
shop,” Henley murmured while her back was turned.

I shoved him playfully.

With Henley there were no secrets—nothing I had to hide from him. He knew my entire history, and I liked that I could be open with him.

I had almost forgotten to remind Henley about the credit card. I turned to him with a more serious expression. “We should probably use the credit card before—”

“I know,” he said.

He understood. He always did.

Henley withdrew the credit card from the inside of his shirt. I wondered if Richard had had a sewn-in pocket there.

I had told Henley a credit card was like a magic card for buying things. Henley seemed to understand it best when I told him it was like putting it on his father's tab in his day—a way of promising to pay the amount later.

When the woman had placed all the clothing in the bag, she took the card from Henley. We watched her insert the card into the machine.

“Could you please enter your PIN number?”

I froze. PIN number? What on earth was a PIN number? We didn't have a PIN number.

“Oh, this is an American credit card. I'm so sorry about that. American credit cards, even those with chips, don't need PIN numbers. Just a signature would be fine.”

Henley didn't blink an eye when he wrote “Reed L. Glazen.”

“Thank you,” Henley said, taking the bag and the credit card.

I half expected it not to work. Or maybe for police to come
running into the shop. But neither of those things happened.

“Have a nice day, Mr. Glazen!” The woman waved as we rejoined Alanna and Peter. I hoped they hadn't heard that.

The bell chimed again on our way out.

Realizing that I hadn't let go of the newspaper I had found on the boat, I stuffed it into the bag Henley was carrying that had the clock also in it.

I noticed Henley slowed down to let Alanna and Peter walk ahead of us.

“That wasn't too bad, was it?” Henley said to me.

“I never thought I'd do something like that.”

“Well, there's certainly a first time for everything,” he said, before catching up to Alanna and Peter.

I sped up to walk with them.

“It isn't long to the hostel. Promise,” Alanna said.

“I'm pretty sure you said that ten minutes before the shop,” Henley said.

She laughed. “No. Honest. It's close now.”

“If you say so,” I said.

“Bet you're looking forward to putting everything down and grabbing a bite to eat, eh?” Peter said.

“Well, Henley's the one carrying everything, but that's the idea.”

Henley lifted the bag he was carrying. “I'm ever the pack mule.”