The Here and Now (28 page)

I put my hands over my face.

“I don’t care what Mr. Robert or Mrs. Crew think. I have no respect or loyalty to them. But what would we tell the other members of our community if they saw you had found happiness with a time native?”

I try to stop the tears with my hands. She puts her arms around me, and I can feel we’ve both broken our rule now.

“We are all lonely, Prenna. We are all wishing for freedom. We all want to belong to this time—not just to skim over it.
We all desperately miss what we lost. Imagine the difficulty if every one of us tried to find your happiness?”

Time passes and I lean in to her. I give my whole weight up to her. She holds me like she hasn’t since I was a baby. Since maybe ever. I feel like a baby, and I just want to rest. I feel like her baby.

“I am sorry, my darling,” she whispers to me.

TWENTY-SIX

I don’t bring the boring tank tops or the boxer shorts or the Tic Tacs. I’ve still got the playlist on my phone, but I know I won’t play it. I hold the New York Giants sweatshirt for a long time before I put it back on the top shelf of my closet.

We meet at the parking lot of a trailhead at Haverstraw. Ethan comes toward me with his tent folded up under one arm and his one sleeping bag under the other. I think my heart will break.

As soon as he sees my face he knows something isn’t right. His intuitive eyes are on mine, discovering the truth as always, but he keeps his voice light.

“Is it not Friday?”

“It is Friday.” I can barely keep my head up.

“Is this not our night?”

I feel my chin quivering. I wish it would stop. “I think maybe it’s not our night.”

He puts his things down on the bench at the trailhead. We
start walking into the woods. He reaches for my hand. “What happened?”

“Good things. That’s what’s so strange.”

“Tell me.”

It’s easier, in a way, to be walking and not looking directly at his face. “There was a second big meeting of the community last night. My mom organized it. They voted in new leaders. They fired the counselors in one shot and invited all community members who are interested in those jobs to submit applications. They voted out the pills and the glasses. They got rid of the systems of punishment and the so-called safe houses. They determined that the new counselors should actually provide support and encourage us to talk, not just browbeat and intimidate us.”

He glances at my face as we walk. “Prenna, that is wonderful. I’m happy for you. For all of you.” He says it sincerely, but he’s steeling himself for the next thing. “Is your mother one of the leaders?”

“No. They wanted her to be, but she prefers to head up the medical team and focus all her energy on containing the virus Baltos started. She thinks they can stop it before it turns into the plague.”

“Who are they, then? The leaders?”

“Mostly people who were aligned with my dad at the beginning. People like my mother who’ve been marginalized and silenced since we got here. You only know one of them.”

“Who?”

“Me.”

“You are kidding.”

“No. I wasn’t at the meeting when it happened. I found out about it from my mother when she got home. She said she
didn’t put my name up for consideration, but a couple hundred other people did.”

“Unbelievable.”

“I know.”

“That’s my girl, Henny. You beat ’em and you joined ’em.”

I smile. “I guess so. It’s a heavy responsibility, though. I guess it’s easier being a rebel than being in charge.”

Ethan nods. He looks sad. “I have a feeling we’re getting to my part of it.”

“Yeah.” I slow our pace.

“A rebel can have a native boyfriend, but a leader can’t?” He’s trying to sound sardonic, but he’s not wrong.

We get to a rocky part by the river. I sit down and he follows my lead. I have to look at him when I say this. “It’s not just that.” I hold his hands. “I would give up all of that for you if I could. The problem is that the threat to you is real. Baltos proved it. He didn’t bring back a preexisting plague. It was his contact with time natives that started it. My mom says we can hope to contain it, but not if we’re sowing new seeds of it.”

Ethan puts his head down.

“What if everyone in the community was doing what we are doing? None of us knows how to avoid the risks because we don’t understand what we’re carrying yet or how it could spread.”

“Yet.” He lifts his head. He pounces on that word.

“Yet or if or never. There’s no way to know.” I lean close. I need him to understand. “Being with me would ruin your life, Ethan. It could ruin your health. It could destroy your hope of having any freedom, having a family. You can’t give that up. I won’t let you.”

“Being with you is all I want.”

I start to cry. How long could I hold it back?

He pulls me toward him and cradles me against his chest. “From the first time I saw you right up the river from here, Penny, I never stopped thinking about you. I didn’t see you again for two years and I thought about you every day. The fact that I was there when you came, that I can see the things I see, that we have taken this insane ride together. We are meant to be.”

I cry some more. I wipe my nose on my hand and look up at him. “How can you say that? I’m not supposed to be here at all. It’s wrong. Time doesn’t want us to be together.”

“Time doesn’t
want
anything. Isn’t that what you said?”

“I did, but—”

“We
are
together. Maybe time is not the one in charge.”

I cry into his T-shirt. I get it wet. I love the feel of him and the smell of him. I love him. But my job is to protect him. I made sure he lived past May 17, and I’m going to make sure he keeps on living.

I love his living heart beating against my temple. For a long time it syncopates the sound of the river sliding by us.

“It’s not over, Prenna. Someday you’ll realize it too.”

I guess it’s Monday evening when the knock comes at the door of my room. I think it’s Monday. I’m not sure. I’ve spent most of the time since Friday night in my bed, and the hours and days kind of blend together.

It feels like a world-changing effort just to get out of bed and open the door. I don’t really bother about the fact that I’m in pajamas and my hair is going in twenty directions and I haven’t brushed my teeth in how long.

“Hi, Prenna.” It’s Katherine. I can tell she wants to reach out and hug me, but she hasn’t quite got the knack of physical contact yet.

“Hi, Katherine.” She’s not wearing her glasses. She looks so young and pretty.

“Put on some clothes, okay?”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because we’re going on a little trip.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see. Come on.” She goes to my dresser and starts pulling things out of the drawers. She seems to understand it’s not going to happen on its own.

I get back in my bed. “I’m tired,” I say.

“That’s what you said yesterday. And Saturday.” She hands me a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and a red bathing suit.

“Well, I’m still tired.”

“Just put them on.”

I sigh. “Why the bathing suit?”

“Just put it on. You’ll see.” She opens the door to my bathroom and points the way. In case I forgot. “And brush your hair. And wash your face. And brush your teeth.”

I glare at her, but I’m too tired to be defiant. Katherine’s a lot more stubborn than she looks.

I carry the clothes into the bathroom. I put them on and get washed, trying not to look in the mirror as I do it. It’s just depressing.

“Go get in the car,” she says. “I’ll be right there.”

“I thought I was supposed to be the leader.”

She laughs and marches me down the stairs. She stops off in the kitchen. I hear her talking to my mother, and she comes out carrying a picnic basket.

“Your mom packed us some treats,” she says brightly.

I peer in and see all my favorites, including mango smoothies and a new box of Mallomars. “All this sympathy and I’m going to get super fat,” I mention dully as I follow her to her car.

Katherine plays music loud, all songs she knows I love, and we drive with the windows open. It does feel good to be moving.

“We can just talk, you know, Pren,” she says over the music and the wind. “Thanks to you, we can talk about anything we want.”

I stare out the window. That’s something I’ve hungered for since we got here. Now I don’t know what to do with it. “What should we talk about?”

Katherine has a look of mischief about her. She turns the music down. “We could talk about how awful Ms. Cynthia looks with her new haircut. How bad her breath is. How much fur Mr. Robert has creeping out of his nose.”

We try that for a while but it peters out. We both know they don’t matter anymore.

Instead, we talk about the future. Not the far future, but the near one. I can tell she has something she wants to tell me. “I was thinking I might apply to be a counselor,” she says. I can see she is shy about it.

“Oh, Katherine. That’s the best idea.” I feel a stirring in my chest. I can’t help it. What a beautiful thought. The worst of our community replaced by the loveliest.

We drive for a long time, and I can feel it when we’re getting close to the ocean. I can feel the warm salty air in my face.

She parks near the lighthouse at Fire Island. We shed our
clothes, pull socks off our tender feet, and skitter over the sand like newly hatched turtles. We hold hands and wade into the calm night ocean.

I look up at the glorious pink moon gazing at herself in the dark water. It makes my heart stir again. It’s not a moon to take aim at; it’s a generous moon with light enough to bathe in.

No matter how our hearts break, we bend toward life, don’t we? We bend toward hope.

I think back to yesterday, late in the day when I heard a car pull up to the house, and even under two layers of blankets, I knew it was Ethan’s car. I made my tentative way toward the window and watched him walk up to the front door with an envelope in his hand and drop it in the mail slot.

Halfway back to his car he looked over his shoulder and saw me standing in the window. He turned and lifted his hand to me. I pressed five fingertips against the glass. We both stood there, him a cutout against the pink sunset sky. I tried to hold back the crying until he was gone.

In the envelope I saw the newspapers and the cash we’d brought on our trip. I was going to leave it untouched in the top of my closet and shut the door, but my eye caught a bright yellow Post-it note stuck to one of the newspapers. I took it out and followed the arrow Ethan must have drawn to an article on the front page of the last paper, dated June 2021.

The article described in ominous terms the triumph of a billionaire oil and gas tycoon in his crusade to bring down the last of the regulations against carbon emissions, the last gasp of government hope to fight climate change. I didn’t recognize the name, but I certainly recognized the face in the picture.
Whatever the name, Ethan knew and I know it is Andrew Baltos.

We didn’t need proof to know we’d opened up the future. But it sure doesn’t hurt.

When I fell asleep later, I dreamed of my brother Julius. He wasn’t in the old world where I’d always dreamed him before. He was here, healthy and strong, striding up the front walk of a house a lot like our house, holding a bunch of yellow daffodils in his hand.

I think of that dream now as Katherine and I turn our faces up to a blanket of stars so vast and ancient and magnificent that you just know you are living in a world that has thought of everything.

Still holding hands, we swim out far beyond where our feet can touch. It’s scary and uncertain, but it is also thrilling.

Because who knows what happens next?