The Here and Now (25 page)

TWENTY-TWO

We knock on the door of Mr. Robert’s office at nine sharp. My mom is already there. I can’t describe the looks we get walking in.

I introduce Ethan to my mom, though she’s met him before. She looks as though she’s been crying.

“I’m sorry, Molly,” I say in a low voice to her. “I’m sorry for putting you through all this.”

“And this is Mr. Robert,” I say to Ethan. Honestly, Mr. Robert looks like he is in the process of swallowing his tongue.

“Robert. Just Robert,” he mutters. His throat is expanding like a bullfrog’s. He tugs at his collar. “It’s good to meet you, uh, Ethan,” he says. “And now I’d like to ask you to leave and let us talk to Prenna privately.”

“I’d like to stay,” Ethan says. He doesn’t sound threatening or bratty. He sounds immovable.

Mr. Robert is staring deadly eye beams at me. “Prenna.” He clears his throat. “I think the people who care most about
you, like your mother and your friend Katherine Wand, would really appreciate it if you would be reasonable and speak to us
privately
.”

I glance at my mother. I can’t read her face. At least she appears to be unharmed.

“You’ve really made life
difficult
for them, and you’ll only make it worse,” he adds, sympathetic as can be.

I am not putting up with his bullshit. For one thing, it just takes too long. “Let’s sit down,” I say, and Ethan and I do. “We are going to talk openly and honestly, the four of us, and it’s going to make you very uncomfortable. But hopefully, you’ll get used to it.”

“Prenna.” It’s that warning tone I have gotten from Mr. Robert roughly one million times.

“Let’s start with this,” I say. “Ethan knows who we are. No use keeping secrets at this point.”

“Prenna.”
More tongue swallowing from Mr. Robert. “You certainly want
to be careful
,” he hisses.

I look at him. “No, I don’t.”

“Prenna, are you sure—” My mother looks desperately ill at ease.

“Ethan doesn’t know about us because I told him,” I continue. “Ethan knows because he was there at the river in April 2010 when we arrived here. He saw the strange atmosphere at the end of the time path. He saw me, though I have no memory of it. He gave me the New York Giants sweatshirt. Remember? That you gave me such a hard time about?”

I stare at Mr. Robert. “Won’t you sit down?” I pick up the bowl of jelly beans from the table. “Jelly bean?”

Neither of them says anything. I was sort of counting on
this. Once I get going, Mr. Robert won’t want to risk saying anything in front of Ethan that might make it sound like he is accepting my premise. Any premise. And my mother will follow his lead. I think this is good because it will speed things up.

“But that’s not what I’m here to talk about,” I say. At last Mr. Robert sits in his interrogation chair and my mother follows, sitting around the corner of the sectional sofa. “I am here to tell you, Mr. Robert, that you have to leave me alone. You must let Katherine come home and leave her alone. You must leave my mother alone. Even if they don’t demand it, I do.”

“Really. Is that so?” he sputters, red faced.

“Yes, it is. I’m not afraid of you, and I’m not afraid of the rules. At least, I’m not afraid of breaking the rules that matter. The future you are clinging to—the place we came from—wasn’t created by the regular order of things. It was created by a traveler—the famous Traveler One. He does exist. We’ve met him. And he may or may not have handed down our rules, but if he did, it was only after he broke every single one of them.”

Silence. My mother’s face has opened in surprise.

“Ethan and I aren’t trying to disrupt the sequence of time; we’re trying to fix it.”

“Prenna, how do you know this?”

Mr. Robert glares at my mother for this, but I am so relieved.

“A man named Andrew Baltos arrived here from an earlier point in the future. I don’t know exactly when or how, but I am certain of it. I also know his version of the future was different and a lot less dire than ours, and I believe the difference comes from the things he has done while he’s been here.”

Mr. Robert looks truly astonished. I wonder if he or the other counselors know any of this.

I try as simply and as clearly as I can to summarize everything that happened on May 17, 2014. I talk mostly to my mother, because I can feel that she is listening.

“It’s the right thing to protect time’s natural sequence,” I say to them, to her. “We were right to try. But now that we know it’s been twisted and mistreated by a traveler like us, I think it’s right to try to fix it and contain the damage. We didn’t save Mona, but we saved her research and we’ve stopped Baltos, at least for the time.” I glance at Ethan. I don’t tell them about Ethan, and I leave Poppy’s part out too. It just seems too much for now. “I think we did enough to open things up. I think we’re on a different course. At least, I really hope we are. Even you have to agree, Mr. Robert, there’s no point in propping up a future that’s an absolute trauma, if we’re honest about it. We might as well just let go of it and work for a better one, you know?”

I look at Mr. Robert. I don’t think he knows.

“I’m not saying we should tell people where we come from. I’m happy to keep that secret, if you prefer. We create a lot less impact that way. But you should know I am not scared to let it out if you force it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I am not expecting a nod or anything.

“I think it’s time for us to assimilate for real, to let go of the surveillance and the intimidation you call counseling and the punishments. Let’s get rid of the glasses and the pills. You’re not helping us, you’re hurting us, Mr. Robert. You know it’s true.”

I turn to my mother. “I stopped taking the pills and my eyes
are perfect. I don’t need the glasses anymore, and you must know the glasses are for watching us.”

I study her face, her eyes cast down. Did she know about the pills? Didn’t she know about the pills? In my heart I don’t think she knew. I’m not quite done with this topic.

“Molly, you need to figure out what’s in those pills, if you don’t already know. If there’s anything good in them, you need to separate it from the poison that is blinding us.”

She lifts her eyes to me, and I now see that she is desperate to talk. I can see she has questions. Her eyes are alive in a way I haven’t seen in a long time. But she won’t talk here.

“Let’s try to contain the damage done by Andrew Baltos as best we can,” I carry on, “and beyond that live as good citizens and good family members and see where things go. That’s what I think we should do.”

I look up again. Silence.

“I know, I know, Mr. Robert. You’ve got big plans for me. You’re planning to take me from my bed tonight, if not sooner, and put a quick end to me. You’d do that to me for just a fraction of the things I’ve done.”

My mother looks horrified, though of course she knows it’s true. “Prenna—”

“It’s okay,” I say to her. “They’re not going to do that. They are going to leave me alone.” I turn to Mr. Robert and fix my gaze on him. “Here is why.” I stop and look around, trying to guess where the cameras might be. “I’m pretty sure Mrs. Crew and the rest of the leaders are watching this meeting, but in case they aren’t, I want you to share it with them as soon as possible. Nobody besides Ethan knows anything about us now. And Ethan can be trusted to keep our secret. He’s done
it for four years already. But if you do anything more to harm me or my mother or Katherine, it won’t stay that way. I will go to the Immigration and Naturalization Service first. They will want to get our immigration status squared away, and that is going to be interesting, to say the least. After that I’ll go to the IRS, I’ll go to Child Protective Services, and finally, if I need to, I’ll go to the police. Aside from just the minor stuff—the drugging, kidnapping, and illegal surveillance—you’ve done some other things that law enforcement might see as even more problematic.” I do kind of hope Mrs. Crew is watching. “And thanks to you, it’s all recorded.”

I look at Ethan and he smiles a small smile at me. I must say, I am sort of enjoying myself. I love the truth. I really do. And I really hate Mr. Robert.

So why stop here? “Mr. Robert, you are probably thinking, ‘No, she’s not. We’ll never give her the chance. I’d kill her right this second if I didn’t have to wait for Ethan and her mother to get out of the room.’ But you are wrong. If you put me away, Ethan will use the huge amount of information we have compiled and do it for me. My disappearance will be one more piece of damning evidence. And Ethan is smart. He knows everything about us. He’s a good programmer and a devilish hacker. He’s already uploaded files to a whole network of servers. If you mess with him, he’s made sure the information we’ve got will immediately be distributed to every agency I mentioned along with a whole bunch of carefully chosen news shows and media outfits. I know it will be a fascinating story. Seriously, we will dominate the news cycle for months on end.” Now I should stop. I’m being reckless, but I can’t seem to hold back. “If you choose that, be sure to whiten those teeth
and lose a few pounds, Mr. Robert, because the camera really does put on weight. And no offense, but that’s the last thing you need.”

I need to shut up. I think we are almost done. “So we could do all that. Or, as I suggested, we could live as good citizens—quiet, law-abiding normal citizens—and see where things go. Your choice.”

Nothing. Silence. I’m having trouble reading even my mother’s face at this point.

“You don’t need to tell me anything right now,” I offer. “You can talk it over with the leaders, and then you can show me. If you and the leaders agree to my suggestions, then I want to see my friend Katherine Wand at my house by five o’clock tomorrow evening. No boarding school, no matter how terrific, can be farther away than that. If I see her, I’ll figure we’ve got a deal. If not, I’ll get started with the INS. Or, I guess, Ethan can get started on my behalf if something happens to me. Or, I guess, one of Ethan’s numerous proxies will get started on our behalf if anything should happen to him.”

I stand and walk toward Mr. Robert. I pull up close to him so I can be sure he sees and understands exactly what I mean. “I am not afraid to blow it open, Mr. Robert. I have nothing to lose. I will not hesitate if you give me a reason. But I’d rather not. I’d rather we live in peace and quiet and make the best of the new future that’s unfolding. I will be agreeable if you will. But no more threats, no more punishments, no more surveillance.” I fix him with a good long look. “That is over.”

TWENTY-THREE

It’s a busy kind of a day.

Ethan checks home with his mom, sets up a few things on his home computer, and returns the neighbor’s car. Seniors are done with classes, but he needs to go by school to take care of a couple of things. We promised to be back in Teaneck by one in the afternoon to give full statements about the murder. After that we drive to the storage place in the Bronx and don’t arrive at Holy Cross Medical Center in Teaneck until almost six o’clock.

I bring the last three months of my old memory bank, a copy of my unfinished essay on the first blood plague, and a couple of the letters I wrote to my brother in a sealed envelope. I want Andrew Baltos to know how it really was. I’m not sure if he’ll be able to read the memory bank, but I suspect he’ll figure something out. Maybe he’ll never get out of prison. But maybe he will and it will somehow make a difference.

We’ve had to get permission from the detective for our visit
to Baltos, and of course we agreed to the presence of the armed guard they have stationed at the door of his hospital room.

It’s strange, because when we get to his hospital room, Baltos doesn’t seem unhappy to see us. His leg is all bound up and he looks reasonably healthy. He greets us almost as though we are friends. “Good of you to visit,” he says, and it doesn’t sound purely sarcastic.

He turns his gaze to Ethan. “Who are you? It’s been driving me crazy all last night and today. Even when I’m sleeping, it’s like pins in my brain. I know you.”

Ethan shakes his head. “I don’t think so. If I’d met you, I would remember.”