The Here and Now

by Brashares, Ann

  “Let us spend a moment talking about your friend Ethan,” Mr. Robert says, exactly as expected.

  “Okay.”

  “The conversation you had at the end of the school day yesterday.”

  I shrug. “Yeah.”

  “Do you know what he was getting at?”

  I look straight at him. It’s nice to take a brief vacation from lying. “Not at all.”

  “Do you understand why he was discussing it with you?”

  I shrug again. “I guess because of being in physics together.”

  I stare into the bowl of jelly beans he keeps on his coffee table. I used to eat them by the handful until the time I got pneumonia, and I haven’t eaten one since.

  Then it dawns on me: maybe they are letting me stumble around for a while longer because they want to know what I might find out.

  “You know that old homeless man we were talking about before?” I say. I sound combative to my own ears. I am sure anyone listening to me right now would wish I would shut up. I know I wish I would.

  “Of course.”

  “He says we’re not doing anything to prevent the plagues or make anything better at all. He says we’re just hiding out here.” I want to get a rise out of him, but Mr. Robert is pretty good at controlling his expression.

  “And you believe what he said?”

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. But even if he’s crazy, is it possible he knows something?”

  “Do you think that?”

  “No,” I say with more conviction this time. “But it made me think about it. So are we doing anything? What are we doing?”

  Now he’s leaning back with his arms up and his head resting in his hands. I am looking into his armpits.

  “Prenna, you need to trust that we are doing what is best for the community and for the world. But as you well know, we need to operate within the rules. When you are a little older, and if you can prove you are capable of observing those rules with absolute strictness and discretion, you will take your part in our efforts.”

  I basically tune out everything he says after my name. Whenever he starts a sentence with my name, I know he’s lying. Whenever he starts a sentence with a word other than my name, I know he’s lying.

  “Right, Mr. Robert. I understand,” I say.

  And as he drones on about the deep importance of trust, I sit there gazing at the jelly beans and finally coming to terms with a deep and basic conflict: How can you fix anything if you can’t change anything?

  Mr. Robert won’t get anywhere with me and I won’t get anywhere with him. But if he’s giving me the latitude to gather some information, maybe I should gather information until someone stops me.

  He looks at his watch. “All right, Prenna. Take your pills, stay healthy, be good.” He always says some version of that when it’s time for me to go.

  He stands; I stand. I frown at him. “You should bring Katherine home and send me instead.”

  He loosens his shamrock tie. He’s had about enough of me. “Don’t tempt me, Prenna.”

  I retrieve my phone from the daffodils and walk to the park as evening falls over my neighborhood. I pause for that moment when all the street and sidewalk lights come on at once. Then I keep going. I go to the picnic table where the old man is most likely to be perched with his cart and his cans and his grimy peacock feathers, but he’s not there.

  I sit by myself and check my phone. A missed call from an unfamiliar number and three voice mail messages from Mr. Robert. I delete the messages without listening. For no good reason I call Katherine’s number. There is no way she’s going to pick it up. I’m sure she’s got another number by now, if she has any phone at all. I hear her sweet whispery voice on her outgoing message. I call again and listen again, and then I start to cry. I lie back on the picnic table and watch the leaves moving like a veil of black lace over the deep evening sky.

  My mind goes to Aaron Green. He tried to make it here. He really did.

  I don’t want to end up like that. None of us is remotely free, but at least I get to walk in the sunshine and grow flowers, eat raspberries and swim in the ocean sometimes.

  There is no way they can do that to Katherine. I won’t let it happen. I will never tell her another thing if it means she can come home.

  EIGHT

  “I trust you are using earphones to listen to this message.”

  The mysterious number came up on my phone while I was standing in the kitchen. I ran up to my room before I played the new message. Now I push the button on my phone to pause the old man’s voice. My heart is galloping. I check the hallway, listening for my mother’s voice downstairs. I close the door of my room very quietly and stuff the earbuds a little tighter in my ears. It’s hard to say this man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I sit down on my bed and push the button to resume.

  “I hope I haven’t scared you,” he says. “I know you have trouble believing what I’ve said. That is natural. But I hope you’ll think it through and trust your reason. Your people weren’t the only travelers to use the time path. I came alone, twenty-four years after you, but I arrived in the same place at the same time. I know what you went through. I went through it too, and more. I know Katherine is gone, Prenna, and you must be feeling alone. I encourage you, whatever happens, to talk to Ethan and tell him the truth. He already knows more than you realize. In the meantime, there is something I would like to give you … just in case. Come find me when you can. And, Prenna, take off those glasses they’ve got you wearing, go get those pills they’ve got you taking, and throw them all in the garbage.”

  How can he expect me to do these things? Does he not know about the rules? Does he not realize that my community, my past and my continued existence hang in the balance? It’s not like there’s some other life I can choose.

  I listen to the message twice more before I delete it. There’s that strange pull in his voice. I want to fit him into some memory of my old life and I’m also scared to try. It was so long since we were there, and the atmosphere of my life was so different then, it feels impossible to extend any clear memory from that time to this one. It feels like they took place in different languages and there is no code to translate between them.

  And there’s that irrational hope, the tormenting spark that’s kept me searching from the day we got here, sent me following a stranger in a plaid vest. I’ve given up so many times, I don’t think I can try again. But what if?

  He says to tell Ethan the truth. I try picturing it. I try to think of the words I would say: Ethan, I am from the future. Really?

  I don’t think I could do it. If Mr. Robert called and told me to, I don’t know if I could do it. It would be like peeing in my pants in the middle of assembly. It goes so hard against everything I know, I’m not sure I could physically do it.

  And how could I possibly ditch my glasses and my pills? Does the man want me to die? If so, there are easier and faster ways to kill me. If I do any part of what he says, I will set them in motion.

  How can I trust him? Who trusts the homeless, can-collecting man who sings opera to himself? Who does that?

  Something about the way he said my name. What if …?

  He said to trust my reason. Well, my reason tells me not to do those things he says.

  I won’t do those things.

  In the meantime, I find the number he called from and call it back. It’s an impersonal, computer-voiced message—the kind that comes when you buy the phone. I tap my foot, waiting for the beep.

  “There are rules I have to follow,” I say. “I won’t survive if I break them.”

  After dinner I see I have a message from the same number. I shut myself in my closet with my earbuds.

  “Time has her rules, Prenna. I won’t argue that. The real ones are inescapable—you can’t break them if you try. And you will learn, maybe painfully, what they are.

  “Many of the rules you’ve been taught are just for the sake of controlling and dominating you.
But not all of them are wrong. You must be careful. We are interlopers here, and we must be humble and cautious. We can do terrible damage—it’s possible we already have. There are ramifications to everything we do. Some we hope will be good. But we should not interfere with time’s sequence more than we have to.

  “I wish you could have everything you could want in this life, Prenna, but I fear there are limits to what we can ask for.”

  I hang up. I stare at my phone. I have that thought: What if?

  I have another thought: What did any of that mean?

  After a while I have a third thought. I open my window and throw my phone back into the daffodils.

  June 2012

  Dear Julius,

  I ate mango. It’s a sticky orange fruit, sweet and sour, and it comes apart in threads, with a hard little skull in the middle of it. It is so good. Even better than pineapple. I think I would eat it even if you told me it was deadly poisonous.

  I keep thinking that when the time comes around for you to be born, we are going to have fixed the world so there will still be mango. Just picturing you taking one bite, Julius. That makes everything worth it.

  Love,

  Prenna

  NINE

  At school I am practically jumping out of my skin, knowing where I am going after the last bell and knowing the first question I’m going to ask when I get there.

  Ethan keeps trying to approach me, and I avoid him. At the beginning of math class he plunks a gift down on my desk. I glance at the door. Mr. Fasanelli is late; there’s no getting out of this. I stare at his offering. The gift-wrapping job is so poor, I am sure he’s done it himself.

  “Should I open it now?” I ask.

  “Sure,” he says.

  “Nice wrapping,” I say.

  He shrugs, not sure whether I am serious. “I used too much tape,” he says.

  It is a brand-new pack of cards, still in its cellophane. I knock them against my palm, enjoying the density of them, appreciating the hokey image of water lilies on the back.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  He nods, and by his face I know he is trying to say something with them. I’ll play along, he is saying. I’ll teach but I won’t ask.

  And here, I realize, is a thing you can’t undo. When you open yourself to somebody, when you feel these things that you feel, well, what do you do then? You can try to ignore it, maybe you can try to forget about it, but you can’t undo it and you can’t give it back.

  “Are you …?”

  “Have you …?”

  “Did you …?”

  “Am I …?”

  This is a difficult question to phrase. But I have to ask him. There are so many other questions that would naturally ensue. But this is the first and the hardest.

  I am walking in my reverie when I discover that Ethan is behind me, hurrying to catch up.

  “Why are you following me?” I ask.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Can’t we talk later?”

  “Can we talk now? It’s kind of important.” He doesn’t seem to care that I am walking briskly away from him.

  “Later?”

  “Now?”

  “I can’t now.” I say that, but I stop. I can’t ignore him. I can’t intentionally hurt him.

  “Prenna, I know there is a lot of stuff you don’t want to talk about, like where you come from. Maybe you think you can’t tell me. And that’s fine. You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to say, but the thing is …”

  I start walking again. I can’t afford to destroy myself. Not yet.

  “The thing is …”

  I turn a corner. I am practically running.

  “The thing is, I think I already know.” Ethan’s eyes, when I hazard a glance at them, are begging me to talk to him.

  If any of the natives know the truth about you—any of them!—no matter how helpful and kind they might appear, they will take you apart. They might act like they want to help, but they won’t. They will destroy you and destroy all of us.

  These are the teaching words from my mother, from Mr. Robert, from my friends, from every person I know and count on.

  I am starting to slow down. I don’t know how long I can run from this. “And why is that?”

  “Because a few days ago Ben Kenobi told me. And he said—”

  I turn on him. “Have you not noticed that he is crazy?”

  “I’ve talked to him a lot. I don’t think he’s crazy.”

  “Really?” I’m performing now, and I’m not very good at it.

  “Really.”

  “And what did he tell you?” I try to sound sarcastic and unconcerned, but it’s not coming out right.

  Ethan is being careful. He gives me a questioning look. To my astonishment he reaches out and takes my glasses from my face. He puts them in his back pocket. When he speaks again, his voice is slow and quiet. “He told me you are not from a different place.” He is talking so slowly I can hear my own fast breathing between each word. “You’re from a different time.”

  I gape at him. I feel myself deflating. I feel too tired to lift my head. Now what? I need to be amazed by the absurdity of this. Such preposterousness knows no bounds! I need to puff up. I wish I could. “And you are going to believe that because a homeless man who wears peacock feathers told you?” I gesture weakly toward his back pocket. “And he also told you they monitor us with the glasses?”

  Ethan is silent, and I feel a compulsive, panicky energy building, a need to fill the air with words. “If he’s Ben Kenobi, are you supposed to be Luke Skywalker? Am I supposed to be Princess Leia? Or are you seeing me more like one of the weird guys in the alien bar?” I think I’m trying to be funny, but no one is laughing.

  Ethan looks hurt. He deserves some honesty from me, but he’s not getting it. We are deep in rule-breaking territory here, and I need to be careful.

  “I won’t believe him if you tell me not to,” he says, again so quietly I can barely hear. His eyes are locked on mine. He always sees more than he should see.

  Now is my opening, my opportunity to do the thing I was taught to do above all other things: to tell the lie and tell it well. Instead, I am struck dumb, my eyes filling with tears. What a failure I am. I don’t tell the lie or tell it well. I just stand there like an idiot.

  “Oh, Prenna.” He sees my tears. I know he doesn’t want to hurt me. Whatever they say.

  I think I could lie to anyone else in the world right now. I think I could lie in rhyming verse to Mr. Robert or Jeffrey Boland or even my mother. I could lie in perfect sonnets to Ms. Cynthia or Mrs. Crew. But I look at his face and I can’t lie to Ethan.

  He starts to reach for me, but I wipe at my eyes and turn sharply in the opposite direction. “I have to go,” I say.

  “We haven’t got much time,” he says to me as I walk away.

  It’s less than half a block before I realize it’s not just the tears blinding me. I strode away without my glasses, and I can’t go back. I’m too proud, too afraid, too determined, and, as the counselors are fond of reminding me, too stupid.

  I wait for the old man in the park. I think he’ll be there because it’s quieter and more private than the grocery store parking lot, and I’m not sure where else he has to go. I sit at the picnic table next to his favorite clearing. I stumble around the perimeter of the park a couple of times just in case.

  I have some time to think about his life, the places he goes, the things he carries. Little by little I let my mind run over the things he said and tentatively follow the possibility that some of them are true. I try them out, like plugging new variables into a very complicated equation and seeing how it holds together.

  The truth is strong. Unlike a lie, it gets stronger over time, and it has the power to draw disparate feelings and ideas together in a way that a lie never can. The more I think about the things he said, the more I can sense the power of truth in them.

  The less crazy I imagine him, the more tr
agic he seems.

  And the what if … I can’t think my way into the what if, because even a tiny step stings me with hope and fear and drags along behind it a feeling that is overwhelmingly sad.

  I slow down long enough to wonder about Ethan too. What should I do? It’s an unthinkable sin to tell an outsider our secret. But what if that outsider already knows?

  A couple of hours pass, and it’s getting dark. I’ve been perched in such an odd position both my feet have fallen asleep. It’s time to shake them out and be on my way. I’ll try the parking lot. That’s the place where I’ve left things for him in the past. Maybe that’s where he expects me to look.

  I can’t think very far ahead. I really can’t see very far ahead. I can’t go home and face my mother and Mr. Robert. I can only think of finding Ben Kenobi, discovering what he has for me and asking the question I have to ask.

  I scan the parking lot very carefully in small sections. I see no sign of him in the front part of the lot, so I go around the side of the giant store. It is quiet here now. Very few cars even in the best spots. The sides and the back will be empty.

  I hear something. Kind of a guttural sound, and it scares me. It’s not a good sound. It comes from the back of the lot. I hear it again and then a shout that doesn’t form a word.

  I am running now. Putting my arms out, I am guided by my ears more than my eyes. I run toward the sound. There is little light back there, but I see shapes and shadows moving and hear a voice crying out.

  “Who’s there?” I scream.

  As I get close I see the outline of a figure bent over. It’s a man, I’m almost sure, not tall but thickly built. I make out the brim of a baseball cap on his head. He stops and turns for a moment. Does he see me? I think he must, because he stands up and runs across the lot and disappears around the side of the store. If my eyes were better, if the light were better, I would have been able to see his face.

  There is another shape, which is a shopping cart, and a darker shape, which is on the ground. I go down on my knees, putting my hands on that dark shape. I hear the moans. I feel the warm wetness across his chest I know is blood. I know who it is.