The Here and Now (12 page)

They’ll kill her if they have to
. He knew what they were capable of. Did they kill him?
I am so sorry, Poppy
, I say to him in my thoughts.

I lie down, resting my warm cheek on the leather seat. I tuck my knees into my chest, like a fetus. Mr. Douglas is making turn after turn, and the car is silent. I should try to keep track of where we’re going, but I can’t.

My heart aches to think of Ethan carrying me to the car, holding me with both arms, stroking my hair. There’s an ache and there’s a longing. The separation feels like a physical pain.

What if, after everything, that is all we get? After years of tying myself in knots to keep the truth of who I am from Ethan, it turns out he knew from the moment I got here—before I even knew. The sweatshirt, my forbidden touchstone, folded up and hidden away all the time in the highest part of my closet. That was him too.

I think of the old man’s flickering eyes, Poppy’s eyes, that last moment of recognition.

I wish I had some happiness I could keep.

I feel tears trickling over the bridge of my nose and landing in my hair. I go back to one of my last memories before we made the trip here. I despaired over saying goodbye to Tiny, my grandmother, and my friend Sophia. “Why are we leaving them?” I remember asking my mother.

She said it was because we needed to fix a few things, to make the world better for the people we loved. I believed it, and back then even she believed it.

But it was never going to happen, was it? We are just parasites. We haven’t fixed anything. We haven’t helped anybody but ourselves, and we left the rest to die.

And the secrets? All the spying. All the rules. They are for our protection. That’s all they are for.

These days will pass, and I’ll be in an attic or a basement or a cell somewhere, or maybe buried in the ground. May 17 will come and will go, and the world will keep on spinning toward its ruin.

I feel everything hopeful and good draining out of me like blood out of my veins. I imagine I am my father lying in the parking lot of an A&P with his throat open, his life leaking out, and nothing warm left.

We end up someplace far away. Some kind of farm. Not in a happy way with animals or anything. Just a few buildings surrounded by fields and some giant spreading trees casting malevolent shadows. Mr. Douglas seems to know his way around. The place they put me is the basement of a small house—a guesthouse, maybe—a few yards away from the big house. It smells like new paint and new carpet. There’s a room with a bed and a dresser and a desk, and a small bathroom and that’s it. There are two small, high windows.

“I’ve left basic toiletries, a change of clothes, your
second
pair of glasses, and your vitamins in the bathroom. I’ll pick up more of your things from your mother tomorrow. Get ready
for bed quickly and turn out the lights. There’s an intercom connecting to the main house if you need something.”

I sit on the bed.

“And, Prenna? You need to take the pills. You think you know what they are for, but you have no idea.”

I bow my head. There’s no point in arguing.

“On Sunday morning we’ll take you to a comfortable place upstate, where you’ll be secure and can stay longer term.” He starts out the door.

“You mean like a terrific boarding school?”

He turns around. “No. I told you. Katherine isn’t being punished. That’s not the case for you.”

I hate him. “How comfortable?” I demand. “As comfortable as the place you sent Aaron Green?”

He hates me too. I can see it in his face. “That will depend on you,” he says.

I don’t take my vitamins. I don’t care what they say. For the first time since we came here, I skip the little yellow pill. Or rather, I flush it down the toilet. I put my glasses on for now. Are the rules like the vitamins? Whom do they protect and whom do they hurt?

I can see a small piece of the moon from the high window over the desk. The window doesn’t appear to open. I wonder how difficult it would be to break it. Probably pretty difficult. Could I fit through it if I did? Hard to say. It’s like pulling up at a parking space—it’s hard to know how big you are. And then I wonder how fast the counselors would appear if they heard breaking glass over the intercom. Or if I tried to disable
the intercom. Even besides the intercom and my glasses, there’s probably a camera and a microphone set up somewhere in the room.

I don’t even care about where they are sending me on Sunday. I don’t care what happens there. I’m not scared of that. I’m scared of Sunday, because it’s May 18. Because it is one day too late.

I shower, I change my clothes, I don’t sleep. I think about Ethan. Where is he now? Did he see them taking me from my house?

At seven in the morning Mr. Robert opens my door and presents a plate of eggs and toast. He’s already wearing a tie. Plain navy blue today. I put the plate on the desk. I won’t eat it. I won’t sleep and I won’t eat. There’s no living to be done here.

I want to ask him about the “vitamins” and the glasses and the plans he promised all this time for averting the catastrophe. I want to ask him what really happened to my father and what it’s like to tell lies all day long. I also want to punch him in the face.

I just sit there.

“Try not to look so stupid, Prenna,” he says.

Today is Thursday. I am losing hope. Saturday is the day. I stand on the desk and press my face to the high window. From the point of view of a bug in the grass I see a field, some trees, a dirt driveway. What am I going to do?

I watch the driveway. In the late morning a car drives along it and turns onto the road and fades into the distance. It’s the
only car sound I’ve heard. From the shape in the driver’s seat I think it’s Mr. Douglas.

One thing gives me a small feeling of possibility. I take my glasses off, and I keep looking out the window. I am still a bug in the grass, but every hour that passes, I see a little farther.

TWELVE

That night I stand on the desk, watching through the window for the moon. The sky is a dull, dark clouded blue. What if I never see the moon? I try to fight off the feeling of despair.

Suddenly I startle at the glimpse of a pale face looking down. It isn’t the moon. The face bends closer. It is the pinkish pale face of Ethan. He puts his fingers against the glass, five round white dots. I press my fingers to his. I want to cry. I want to get out of here so bad.

He waves me away from the window and I understand. We can’t draw attention. I sit on the bed. I am not breathing at all. I can barely make out what he’s doing in the nearly complete darkness, but I can faintly hear the glass-cutting knife scoring the edges of the window.

I need to do something to cover the sound, faint though it is. They won’t buy singing or talking to myself. So I do what I’ve done before in this room. I cry. I snuffle, I sob. It comes naturally. I imagine Mr. Robert backing away from the intercom.
He is uncomfortable with emotion. He is uncomfortable with what they are doing to me.

Slowly, carefully, Ethan notches the glass and pops it out in one piece. I go into the bathroom. I turn the shower on full blast and then close the door, hoping the light and noise in the bathroom will blot out other activity. I creep across the room and climb up onto the desk. Ethan reaches his hand through and I take it. It’s probably good I haven’t eaten in two days.

He lays his jacket along the bottom to cover the sharp edge. He takes my other hand and pulls me up until most of my body is on the grass. Still, I try not to breathe. I climb out the rest of the way.

Quietly elated and terrified, I follow him across the lawn. I see the woods just a few dozen yards ahead. Without stopping, I take off my glasses and crack them into pieces, dropping them on the grass. I should have left them behind in the room, but there’s no going back now. We don’t slow down until we are deep into the woods, at least a mile from the farm.

Ethan loosens his grip on my hand, and we walk for another couple of miles. At last we cross a road. We keep walking until we reach a gas station. My legs are scratched and aching, and I am exultant.

“This is right near where I parked,” he says. He goes into the store and gets two bottles of water and some candy bars. I follow him down the road to a car, a newish-looking Honda Accord, not his.

“I swapped with a neighbor,” he explains. “Makes us harder to trace if it comes to that.”

I nod. I wait until we are safely in the car to ask. “How did you find me?”

He turns the key in the ignition. “I stuck a tracker into the sole of your sneaker after they took Katherine away.”

My eyes open wide.

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s something they would do,” he says.

I heave a long breath. I gaze at him, on the verge of tears. “Do you know how grateful I am?” He hands me a Snickers bar and I unwrap it blissfully. “Maybe you need to think like them to beat them,” I say.

“I first came late last night to look around,” he says. “I figured out where you were and what I needed, and I came back.”

“You are smarter than they are.”

“They are not as careful as I expected,” he says.

“Because they can’t imagine anyone would actually go outside the community and rely on a time native for help.”

“Time natives?”

I never imagined I’d be saying that term to an actual time native and that it might sound patronizing when I did. “People like you, who belong here. People other than us,” I say. For the first time in four years I’m not thinking in lies. I am not composing any or protecting any. I’m just talking.

“That’s why you could never talk to me.”

“Yes. They don’t trust time natives, none of us do, and we are forbidden to make close connections to them or tell them anything about ourselves. They keep us isolated and afraid. And they know that nobody from inside the community is going to help me. That makes them a little complacent, you could say.”

Ethan gives me a look. “
None
of you trust them?”

I shrug and smile at him. “One of us seems to, no matter how much trouble it brings.”

Ethan takes a moment to pull me toward him. In exhaustion
and relief he presses his face into my neck, and I wish I could stay there. I breathe him in, but only for a moment. “There are other problems too,” I say warily, pulling away.