After Eden

by Helen Douglas

  “I’m sorry I upset you,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry I let you down.”

  “I’m disappointed,” she said quietly. “I’m going to have to think about Saturday night.”

  “What do you mean?” My voice shook.

  “I’m not sure I can trust you to go to the ball with your friends. I’m not so old that I don’t remember what happens at the leavers’ ball. I know there’s alcohol and parties afterward.”

  “I won’t drink anything,” I said. “And Megan’s parents are paying for a limo to drive us.”

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  I poured myself a large glass of water and went out the kitchen door into the backyard. The purple sky from earlier was now a deep, endless black, and the faint stars were turning on and slowly brightening, like a chain of fairy lights. I went over to the picnic table in the middle of the lawn and lay down on it so that the whole black canvas of night was stretched above me. Instinctively I scanned the sky for Cassiopeia, the reassuring w-shape that reminded me the universe was not an empty swirling mass of chaos. I scanned my eyes across the sky to Perseus and Algol, the winking star that was a sun—three suns—to Eden. Home. Ryan’s home. About to become the best-kept secret in the universe.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said a quiet voice.

  Travis. I sat up on the table. He flicked open his lighter and held the flame to the end of his cigarette.

  “Spectacular,” I said. “Do you know any of the constellations?”

  “The Big Dipper,” he said, pointing up at the sky. “Everyone knows that one. And there’s Polaris, the North Star. That’s about it though. What about you?”

  “I only know a couple. You see that w? That’s Cassiopeia. And that over there is Algol, the demon star.”

  Travis chuckled. “Between us we know half the sky.”

  “Did you know that Algol looks like one star, but actually it’s three?” I asked.

  “How do you know that?” Travis inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

  “Someone told me,” I said. I gazed at the sky. Sea mist was heading swiftly inland. In a few minutes the stars would be hidden from view. “I wonder if there’s anyone out there, lying in the yard and looking up at the stars and maybe looking at our sun, wondering if there’s anyone out there looking up at the sky and wondering …”

  “How much did you drink?” Travis interrupted. “Or are you high?”

  I giggled. “Stone-cold sober. Although from Miranda’s response you’d think I’d spent the afternoon turning tricks on Main Street so I could get my next fix.”

  “Did she rip you a new one?” he asked.

  I smiled. “You could say that.”

  He perched himself on the seat. “She’ll calm down. She’ll let you go. I’ll speak to her.”

  “I have to go. Ryan is leaving on Saturday night after the ball. He’s going home and this is my last chance to see him.”

  “You really like this boy.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I like him more than I can put into words.” Somehow the darkness made it easier to say.

  “He’s from New Hampshire, right?”

  “Right.”

  “The world is not so big, Eden. You’ll stay in touch.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s complicated. I can’t explain why. But I know I’ll never see him again after Saturday.”

  “Oh, Eden,” he said sadly. “I really am sorry to hear you say that.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  As I made my way down the lane to Ryan’s house with my hair caught in the branches of the sapling in my arms, I began to regret choosing a tree as my gift to Ryan. Earlier that morning it had seemed a perfect choice—something that would last as long as the distance between us. Now it just seemed designed to ensure that I looked a mess. My hair was tangled, my arms were covered in dirt, and I could feel a trickle of sweat run down my back.

  “Wow, a walking forest!” Ryan laughed as I approached. “What’s this? Birnam wood approaching Dunsinane? Have you come to defeat me? To prove once and for all that you can’t escape your fate?”

  “Umm, help?” I replied, attempting to untwist a length of hair from one of the branches.

  The smell of lemons filled the air around me as Ryan gently untwisted my hair and took the tree from my arms.

  “So what’s this all about?” he asked, a smile making his eyes twinkle.

  “A gift,” I said. “The gardener at the nursery promised me that this tree will last over a hundred years and produce a healthy crop of juicy apples each year. I thought we could plant it today and then when you get back home …” I swallowed as my words threatened to catch in my throat. “When you get home it will still be there, an old, crabby tree, full of apples. You can see what’s become of it.”

  “Is it indigenous?” he said, placing the tree on the ground. He smiled up at me, a big, happy smile that contained none of the barely concealed grief behind my shaky smile.

  “What do you think? Come on, let’s choose a spot.”

  Now that I was no longer trapped in a splay of branches, I could see that the only car in the driveway was Ryan’s.

  “They’re meeting with a lawyer in town,” he said, following my eyes. “They won’t be back for a while.”

  He winked ironically, but I was used to his flirtations by now and knew they were entirely innocent.

  Ryan carried the sapling over one shoulder as we strolled across their vast lawn.

  “How was Miranda?” he asked.

  “As expected. Disappointed in me.”

  Ryan laughed.

  “She didn’t have anything good to say about you either.”

  “But she let you come and spend the day with me?”

  “She’s at work. She doesn’t know I’m here.” I held up my phone. “And I’ve switched this off so she can’t reach me.”

  Ryan got a shovel and began digging a deep hole in the middle of the lawn. His muscles bunched and lengthened as he effortlessly scooped out the earth and piled it to one side. He was just about to lower the roots of the apple tree into the hole, when I stopped him.

  “Why don’t we bury something underneath the apple tree?”

  “Like what? A body?”

  “How about a time capsule?” I said.

  “What do we put in a time capsule?”

  “We did one at school once,” I said. “To celebrate one hundred years of Perran School. It’s supposed to be buried for another hundred years. We put all sorts of things in it. Headlines from newspapers, a photo of the school staff, another one of the student body. A school tie, the school newspaper.”

  “So we could bury things about us,” he said. “What it’s like to be you and me in 2012.”

  “A time-crossed friendship capsule,” I said. “Things that represent our friendship here in 2012.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Do you have a printer?”

  He nodded.

  “Then let’s start with a photo.”

  I held my phone at arm’s length, put my arm around Ryan’s shoulder and grinned into the camera. Snap.

  In the kitchen, we printed out two copies of the photo—one for me to keep and one to bury in our time capsule. It was one of those lucky strikes, a quick snap in which we both looked good. My grin was crinkle-eyed and genuine, quite unlike the careful face I usually composed for a photo. Ryan was smiling at me, not the camera.

  Ryan got a Tupperware container from the cupboard under the sink. “We can use this.”

  I put one of the photos in it.

  “What else?” he said.

  I checked my jacket pocket. My fingers touched a letter I had written for Ryan the night before. I planned to give it to him the night he left.

  “Have you got anything?” he asked.

  I shook my head and then I felt a smaller piece of paper. “Train ticket to Plymouth.”

  “Ah, the romantic train journey to Plymouth where I pulled you into the
loo and showed you my credit cards.”

  “Do you have anything?”

  “My ticket to the Eden Project.”

  “I think we should include a page from Connor’s autobiography,” I said. “If it wasn’t for that book, I wouldn’t know who you really are.”

  “Too risky. We mustn’t include anything that’s from the future. How about I put in one of my sketches of you?”

  He ran upstairs to get it.

  My fingers closed again over the letter in my pocket. I took it out and reread it.

  Dear Ryan,

  By the time you read this, I will be long dead. Although my life will be over, only a day or two will have passed for you. It’s strange to think of you out there, still young and handsome when I am dead and gone.

  Meeting you has changed my life. I hadn’t thought much about what I wanted to do, but now I know I want to do something good with my life, something that helps take care of the planet maybe.

  I wish I’d had the courage to tell you to your face how much you mean to me. But it’s so much easier to write your feelings than it is to say them. I wish you could have stayed. I know why you couldn’t. But I will never forget you.

  Thank you for three wonderful months.

  I love you.

  Eden

  I wasn’t sure I would have the courage to give it to him. I’d never told anyone I loved them before. Not even in writing.

  “I’m going to miss this picture of you,” Ryan was saying as he came back into the kitchen.

  Impulsively I pushed the letter into the container, hiding it under the photo.

  “It’s the first picture I drew of you,” he said. “Back before I knew you were the evil girl who broke poor Connor’s heart.”

  I smacked him jokingly. “If you miss it that much, you can dig it up when you get back to your own time.”

  We carried the container back outside.

  Just as Ryan lowered the time capsule into the ground, a car came slowly up the drive. Ryan stood up straight and wiped his dirty hands on his jeans.

  “That’s not Ben or Cassie,” he said squinting into the sunshine.

  The car stopped and a man got out. Travis.

  “I thought I might find you here,” he said, strolling over to us. “Why aren’t you answering your phone, Eden?”

  “I switched it off.”

  “Miranda was worried about you. She asked me to go home and check you’re okay. I managed to persuade her to let you go to the ball tomorrow, but if you’re not careful she’s going to change her mind.”

  “I’ll call her now.”

  “You need to be more careful,” he said.

  I knew he was right, but all I could think of right now was that Ryan and I had only a few hours left together.

  “Um, Travis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think you could tell her I’m at home? In the yard?”

  “You want me to lie for you?”

  “You know how she overreacts. And it’s not like I’m doing anything wrong.”

  “What are you doing?” Travis peered into the hole.

  “It’s a time capsule,” said Ryan.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Right. A time capsule with nothing in it.” He looked at us both. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”

  “So will you cover for me?”

  Travis scratched his neck. “I haven’t seen you. Don’t get drunk. Don’t let him drive you anywhere. And don’t get caught.”

  We waited until Travis had driven away before saying anything.

  “Travis is cool,” said Ryan.

  “He’s growing on me.”

  Ryan covered the time capsule with dirt while I called Miranda.

  She answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

  “In the yard.”

  Technically that was true.

  “Why didn’t you answer the house phone?”

  “I couldn’t hear it from here.” Also true. “And I didn’t realize I’d turned my cell off. Sorry.”

  “Just keep your phone switched on, okay? I need to be able to reach you. I have to work late tonight. You’ll need to make your own dinner. I’ll see you around ten.”

  “See you tonight,” I said.

  Ryan had finished planting the tree. “You hungry?” he asked.

  “Starving.”

  “I made a picnic.” He looked up at the sky. “It looks like the sun is going to shine for a few more hours. Shall we eat outside?”

  “Are you expecting the weather to change?”

  “It will cloud over later on. But tomorrow will be clear again.”

  “You’re becoming quite British you know—this unhealthy obsession with the weather.”

  Ryan stood up. “When the sky is cloudy, you can’t see the stars. Most of the last two weeks have been too cloudy for stargazing. But tomorrow night will be clear all night.”

  Of course. He would be tuned into things like that. I was suddenly reminded of the fact that Ryan was here for a reason and that he’d only shared with me the big picture, the things I needed to know. By tomorrow evening, he would be gone and it would be too late to ask any more questions.

  He came back with a blue checked picnic blanket that was still in its protective plastic wrap and a traditional wicker picnic basket, crammed with food. He tore the plastic off the blanket and spread it across the grass.

  “When did you get all this?”

  “This morning.” He gestured to the blanket. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  He took out a green bottle and two crystal champagne flutes.

  “I was going to buy champagne, but decided that you’d probably had enough alcohol for one weekend.”

  “You thought right. I will never, ever, drink alcohol again.”

  “So we have sparkling water with a slice of lemon.” He pulled a couple of lemons out of the basket.

  “What else is in the basket?”

  Ryan pulled out several different packages. “Sandwiches,” he said. “Roasted vegetables and hummus. And I made a salad.” He pulled the lid off a glass container. Inside was a salad made from cherry tomatoes, cucumber, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, black olives, and tiny grains I didn’t recognize. “And we have cherries and strawberries.”

  “Wow. That looks really good,” I said, stunned. I would have expected Ryan to be the sort of boy who’d buy prepared food from the supermarket.

  Ryan rolled his eyes. “What? You didn’t think I could make a picnic?”

  “It’s not that. I’m just surprised at how much trouble you’ve gone to.”

  He smiled. “It was no trouble. I wanted today to be special. Tomorrow will be stressful. I’ll be working. We both will be.”

  The sun was warm on our backs. We ate the sandwiches and drank the cold water and talked about trivial things: the pink and silver theme of the ball, our favorite music, Connor and Megan going to the ball together.

  “It’s hard to believe that Connor is such an important person in the future,” I said. “He’s so ordinary. He’s just Connor. He’s good academically, but he’s not exceptional. I know at least a dozen people in Year Eleven who are smarter than him.”

  Ryan laughed quietly. “A few weeks ago you asked me who my hero was. When I was younger, Connor was one of my heroes. For becoming such a big hero with so little effort.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He discovered a temperate planet, quite by chance. Serendipity. It could have been anyone or no one. It wasn’t as though he’d been searching the skies for a habitable planet. He just happened to have a big argument with someone—you—and go outside and look up at the sky.” Ryan smiled and shook his head. “The discovery wasn’t a big deal at the time. Planets were being discovered every week. There was just a small article in the daily paper and that was that. He didn’t go on to become a famous astronomer or anything like that. He just bummed around for a few years being spectacularly unexceptio
nal.”

  “What did he do?”

  “You can probably guess.”

  “From the pictures in his autobiography, I’m guessing he finally learns to surf. If I had to predict Connor’s future, it would probably be underachieving beach bum? Am I close?”

  “Don’t ask me to confirm or deny,” said Ryan. “You’re going to grow up with the guy. How would you like it if he knew everything you were going to do before you did it?”

  “But you haven’t explained why he was your hero. Why do you admire him if he did so little?”

  “For seizing opportunities when they arose. Eden didn’t matter when we couldn’t get there. But then my grandfather discovered a means of traveling across the galaxy, and suddenly Connor Penrose was famous. He was everywhere. He was on one of the first voyages to Eden. He was interviewed on every talk show. He was everyone’s favorite dinner-party guest. He dined out on that one opportune discovery for the rest of his life. To achieve so much success with so little effort is quite admirable.”

  I grinned. “There’s no such thing as a work ethic in the twenty-second century then?”

  “Work for work’s sake? No.”

  I sighed. “Poor Connor. To think he would have had a lifetime of cool parties and easy money ahead of him and now he doesn’t.”

  “We’re not there yet.”

  “I hope he finds something else. I would hate to be responsible for robbing him of a lifetime of fame and fortune.”

  Ryan raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure Connor cares too much about fame. And I bet he’ll have a good life whatever lies ahead of him. He has the knack of seizing opportunities when they arise. You may be helping him achieve even greater things.”

  “Or not. It feels so unethical to be helping you ensure he doesn’t achieve the one thing he was known for.”

  “Well, remind yourself that you’re helping save the lives of billions of people. I bet, if he knew, Connor would be willing to sacrifice a little celebrity for that.”

  When the food was gone, I lay back down and shut my eyes against the sun, wondering what sort of magic it would take to keep Ryan here in my time. I tensed as I felt his fingers in my hair.