The Here and Now

by Brashares, Ann

  “There are so many things I have to tell you,” I rush on. I should be more careful—I know that on some level—but I can’t make myself be. “We have no idea what’s going on, you know. The pills don’t protect us. They are making us blind. The pills that you—”

  “That’s not true!” My mother sounds desperate. “Who told you that? Did this man who said he was Poppy tell you that? Because Poppy did not come. No one came besides us.” She lets go of me. “Please don’t talk that way. Please don’t say anything else.”

  “But I have to. I don’t have much time. I have to clean myself up and I have to go, and I have so many things to tell you.” Her words are a jumble and so are mine. “I’ll be away for a few days, and I’ll be out of contact, but I’ll be back, so don’t worry. Poppy says this is the critical—”

  “Prenna, stop.” She is terrified. “You put your trust in the wrong people! Please be quiet.”

  Suddenly I understand the tone of her voice. I hear more than see the presence of two men in the dining room. Ethan was right. I am stupid.

  I glance at my mother. I calculate the distance to the door.

  “Prenna, we need you to come with us,” Mr. Robert says as he walks toward us. The other man moves to stand in front of the door.

  I recognize from his size that the second man is Mr. Douglas, one of the other counselors. He’s well over six feet tall and weighs at least twice as much as me. There’s something in his hand I suspect is a gag.

  I look at my mother. “Don’t let them.” I don’t know why I say this. I am out of my mind. I know she can’t help me.

  “Please cooperate, sweetheart.” Her voice is begging. “They won’t let any harm come to you if you cooperate. They’ve promised me that.”

  “Don’t let them take me.” My voice is rising. “Don’t trust them.”

  “Prenna, be calm,” Mr. Robert orders. I know how much he wants to avoid a struggle. He hates anything ugly or unpleasant.

  I consider for a moment the neighbors. I glance at Mr. Douglas and feel a tinge of fear. I don’t think he has the same compunction as Mr. Robert.

  I look around, frantic. “I need to shower and get my things.”

  “We have what you need for now. Your mother can collect more of your things later,” Mr. Robert says.

  “But look at me.”

  “There’s a shower where we’re going.” Mr. Robert has my arm and is aiming me toward the door. “Let’s not make it difficult,” he says.

  He’s sweating and breathing heavily, and I really loathe him.

  “We’ll call you in the morning, Molly, and let you know the next steps,” Mr. Robert says to my sobbing mother as we cross the hallway.

  I sit in the back of Mr. Douglas’s car, my arms wrapped around my body. It won’t take Ethan long to figure out what happened. I am ashamed.

  Will he try to follow? Mr. Douglas keeps looking up at the rearview mirror, as though he’s expecting just such a contingency. What if they lead Ethan somewhere secret and remote and make him as vulnerable to them as I am? What would they do to him? The counselors are happy to tyrannize us travelers in any way they like, but would they touch a native? It would break so many rules.

  And then I wonder, do the counselors take the rules seriously? What about the leaders? Do they really believe in them? Do they stick to them if it means sacrificing their own desires? Or are the rules just for keeping us in line?

  As we wind through one neighborhood after the next, I have a sickening thought. They took Katherine but they left me. Maybe they let me go free only long enough to lead them to the old man. I am to blame for what happened to him, and now that he’s gone my use to them is over.

  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.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not a good idea for me to be too close to you or to …”

  “What?”

  “To be physically … intimate.” I am suddenly embarrassed. “Not that that’s what you were thinking or anything.” Sitting in this proximity, knowing the feeling of his arms, I am ashamed of the lustful thoughts I had about him when it was all just pretend.

  He looks concerned and a little bit rueful. “No. Right.” I can’t tell if he’s teasing me. “But why do you say that? Nobody’s watching us. You’re past the point of obeying. You’re a scofflaw through and through.” He stops himself and smiles. He meets my eyes. “Not that I was planning to take advantage or anything.”

  I nod slowly. “It’s not just that, though.” I try to think of how to say it. “Because of where I come from, it can be dangerous.”

  “How?”

  “Well, certain changes happen in our cells and our immune systems over time. We were exposed to different strains of microbes—you know, viruses and bacteria and all that—than you were. We have different immunities. That’s one of the reasons they won’t let us near any medical treatment here. They say if a lab gets a look at our blood, it could raise all kinds of impossible questions. Our scientists had the advantage of knowing the disease landscape from the past—I mean, from now—so they could give us shots to protect us. They still give us shots twice a year. And the pills we take are part of that—or at least, they are supposed to be.”

  He looks relieved. “So you’re safe.”

  “Yes. But you’re not.”

  “I’m not?”

  “You’re not safe from me. You don’t have immunities to the germs I carry. I come from a place with illnesses you can’t even imagine. Blood plagues that destroyed our families. I am immune to the plague—we all are who came here, because otherwise we’d be dead. But who knows what little shifts there have been in my RNA or whatever that I could pass on to you.”

  “J
ust by being close to me? I don’t believe that.”

  “The leaders seem to think very casual contact is safe enough. What they warn us about is anything deeper than that. That’s one of the reasons why the rule about intimacy with time natives is so strict. They say it could be like Cortés arriving among the Aztecs and wiping them all out with European smallpox.” I feel myself deflating as I say it. It’s not a very romantic thing to have to tell the only boy you ever thought you loved.

  He looks at me carefully. He is quiet for a while and then he shakes his head. “I’m not scared of that. I’m not scared of you.”

  I take a deep breath. “I am.”

  The mood as we drive is sober. As we cross from New York State into New Jersey, Ethan reaches out for my hand. I can sense in his face the look of dawning rebellion.

  We eventually end up parked at a rest stop off the Palisades. The storage place doesn’t open until seven, and we need to try to sleep. We’ve got a couple of big days ahead.

  “Where do your parents think you are?” I ask him, imagining for a moment a more ordinary life.

  “Visiting my sister at Bucknell for a long weekend.”

  “And what does your sister think?”

  “She thinks I’ve got a secret girl.”

  He gets a blanket out of the trunk and opens the door for me. “You lie down in the back and try to sleep, okay?” He hands me the blanket.

  “What about you?”

  He gets back into the driver’s seat. “I’m really good at sleeping sitting up.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, and that way, I can get us out of here quickly if we need to.”

  “Do you think they are going to find us?”

  “I think they are going to try, but I think we have the advantage. Kenobi said they are good at oppressing their captives, but they have no traction in the real world. I can navigate it a lot better than they can.”

  “You think?”

  “Sure. They have no real contacts among the time natives, as you say.”