by Julie Wright
Tag snapped the book closed and got up, setting it over the collected works of Jane Austen on my lap. “In case you want to read something new.” He went to work immediately. The swirling motion repeated over my temples and forehead.
The headache dissipated as though he were a voodoo doctor chanting spells over me. His fingers swirled down to the nape of my neck. He murmured something about tension causing headaches, too, and moved to my shoulders.
As his thumbs rolled over the muscles in my shoulders, his fingers played lightly at the place just behind my ears. I held myself still, willing myself not to shiver at his touch for fear he’d abruptly move away as he seemed to so often do. He retraced his path to my forehead and temples and back down again.
I could sense that he’d leaned in, felt his breath warm on my neck, and so I turned to face him, not sure what I expected to find.
With my movement, he stumbled back as though caught doing something wrong. He inhaled sharply and tightened his mouth. “Does it still hurt?”
“No. It’s better now.” I felt confused, but the headache was gone. That and all the ache that had tightened itself into my shoulders. “Why do you do that?”
“You asked me t—”
“No.” I interrupted him. “Why do you always jump away like that? It’s not like I have cooties. I’m not diseased, you know.”
The words were out before I could call them back. And seeing the flash of hurt in his eyes, I would have called them back, stuffed them in my mouth, and swallowed them down if such things were possible.
His mouth tightened even more. “No, you’re not. But I am.”
I winced. The problem stemmed from the fact that it was easy to forget. Thinking of Tag as diseased didn’t sit well with me. He just looked so normal. In my mind, all the bad things he’d described would be for the crazy people only, for the people who drooled and fidgeted and gouged each other’s eyes out.
Tag was smart, smarter than anyone I’d met. His way of speaking in complete and well-thought-out sentences amazed me. Give me any ten girls and have him say just five sentences to them, and I’d show you ten girls crazy in love. He knew his history—well enough to keep us out of major trouble. He didn’t drool. He didn’t fidget. He’d read Jane Austen! How many guys in my time zone had done such a thing?
None of the guys I knew had.
So thinking of Tag as diseased, or as a candidate for crazy, irritated my sense of normalcy. And it isolated me again and again. I raced through the spectrum of feelings every moment—miserable to be parted from my sister, horrified at the thought of crazies and dying babies, afraid of the future, angry at Tag for taking me away from my life, grateful to Tag for saving my life. The confusion melted my insides and short-circuited my mind. I might be at least half as crazy as the future’s craziest citizens.
Trying to think of a way to make peace with the moment, not wanting to end up arguing like we had the day before, I held up his book. “So is this your favorite of the books they have here?”
“Of the ones I’ve read.”
“Then I guess I found my entertainment for the day. A rainstorm and a good book are what Winter used to call ideal circumstances. Once we figured out the library was free as long as you returned books on time, we spent most of our time reading.”
He smiled; his eyes warm in spite of the chilled air. “Your love for your sister is part of what makes you shine. I’ve not seen commitment so deep in many years.”
“I do love her.” Tears misted my vision. The burn at the back of my throat held down the sob that bubbled up unbidden from my chest. I swallowed it back down. “I’d die for her.”
His eyes misted over briefly, too, and for a moment, I wanted him to just hold me and let me cry on his shoulder. He took another step back. “Of course you would. But it is sometimes far better to live for the ones we love.” He held my gaze for several moments longer before looking back at the book. “I’ll leave you to read, then. And no more crying—if you can help it. No more crying will mean no more crying headaches.”
I almost made a comment about him fixing any damage but decided he might not offer to help me out again, especially if I made him feel uncomfortable over it.
He left the room, and I allowed myself the shiver I’d held back. The shiver came from more than the cold.
Stockholm. I’d gone Stockholm. I couldn’t make myself not like him. Show me any ten girls in the same room with him, and I’d show you ten girls crazy in love . . . even if I was one of them.
Chapter Twelve
I’d read two chapters of A Sliver of Midnight and found myself totally transfixed by the words. By the fourth chapter, Tag showed up again with a red lap blanket and a cup that obviously contained something warm since steam curled over it.
“Where did you find lemon and honey?” I asked after taking a sip and finding myself surprised by the flavor.
“There’s a lot of honey in the lockdown pantry. The lemon is artificial flavoring.”
“Where’s the lockdown pantry?” It seemed we’d already searched the entire house thoroughly, and I didn’t see any pantry aside from the one in the kitchen.
“In the lockdown compartments under the house.” He took a sip from his own mug and beamed to have discovered the new flavors for us. At what must have looked like confusion on my face, he explained further. “Most houses have lockdown rooms or shelters to protect the owners and their families from home invasions. As the crazies grew in power and organization, fewer and fewer people were willing to live in homes without a place of protection within their homes. This is another problem helped by the IDRs. And a problem almost entirely resolved by crazy law.”
He settled deeper into his chair with his mug between his hands. As he breathed in and out, the curl of steam danced in front of him. “They have a good stock of food there. We’d have been able to survive here for quite a while.”
“You mean until the volcano erupts.”
“Yes, well, we don’t need to survive that long. We only need another day. We’ll be long gone before Rainier feels restless.”
His gaze stayed on me, but mine slipped down to the Orbital he kept on his wrist.
“So it works?”
“Perfectly.”
I sighed and forced myself to focus on his face and not the Orbital. “We could go somewhere else you know . . . some when else. We don’t have to go to wherever it is you’re taking me.”
“I have a responsibility. Rainier’s eruption killed directly and inadvertently many people. Disease killed off many more, and since the ability to have natural births has ceased, mankind will be little more than an artifact littering the earth in another century if things are not shifted.”
“But they can make more babies whenever they want.”
“Yes, but most prospective parents feel reluctant to use the public nurseries. Knowing that crazy testing results in euthanizing over half of the new population makes people fear such efforts. The odds are not in their favor. The government needs babies in real families to keep the few who are not crazy from going crazy. Normal children raised in the nurseries by the nurses turn out worse than the children who were born deficient.”
“So I get to be a brood mare? The idea is ludicrous, you know? How many of these recruits are going to be willing to become baby farms for you?”
“It isn’t like that.” He sank lower in his chair. “You’ll get all this information properly when you’re checked in. Soldiers aren’t supposed to spend this much time with purebloods. I don’t have all the answers, and I’m delivering the messages wrong. You would have been much better off to have arrived in 2113 immediately, to be assigned to your dorm, and to meet your new people. Being with me must be confusing.” He took a long drink of his lemon honey water, and then frowned into his mug.
“I’m glad I’m not there yet. Your messages in the future sound like high-tech brain washing. Being with you at least makes me feel like I’m getting my education honestly. I really d
on’t want to go, Tag. Is America no longer a free country? Does your professor really expect people to go along with this without giving them a choice?”
“He saved you from death. He saved all of them. In return, he only asks that you save the world. You will be the elite—kings and queens. You will have all your needs met, all your wants and desires granted.”
I set down my mug and crossed my arms. “Okay. I want my sister.”
He smiled. “She’s still alive in her own time line and plays her own part in the history of humanity. Your history ended with your accident. Like a book filled with blank pages. Unfinished and tragic in its lack of completion. Professor Raik has offered you a new pen filled with ink. He holds your book out and asks you to fill those pages rather than leaving them blank. He believes the ability to write your story is a gift. He would not take that gift from your sister no matter how her story may end.”
I had to give him credit; his analogy made sense and almost convinced me that I might be acting ungrateful. “But what if her ending is tragic? How can I know? If you can tell me her life isn’t miserable—if you can tell me that she marries a great guy and has six kids, a great career, and a dog, and dies as an old woman, then whatever you say, I’ll do. But I need to know. There has to be a way to look it up. How is this the future and there isn’t one computer in this house, or even a TV? You can’t tell me no one watches TV anymore. With a little Googling, I can find out what happened to her. Don’t you people have Google?”
He flashed his ring at me. “Everything in your day was filled with wires, cables, and complexity. Say what you want about not wanting the future, but once you’re there, you’ll realize how clunky and cluttered your time is. You’ll never want to go back.”
“So turn your ring on and hook me up to Google. I need to know what happened to Winter.”
“If I connected to the net, it would alarm police because my IDR isn’t set up yet in this time. No one in this time would ever believe our story, and we’d end up with the crazies.”
I didn’t ask if that meant we’d be euthanized. Some things are better left unknown. I retreated back into the book, closing off any more conversation. Tag picked a different book and started reading as well. We stayed like that for a long time, like an old couple who’d become comfortable enough with each other not to mind silence settling in between them.
The rain let up after several hours, and the sun broke through the clouds for a short while until the rain started all over again. About halfway through my book I found myself dabbing at my eyes and running the back of my hand over my cheeks.
“He just let her die, didn’t he?” Tag asked quietly.
I nodded, feeling dumb for him noticing me cry and for being so ridiculous as to cry at all, especially at a book! Even growing up moving from place to place and never fitting into families and schools, I never cried.
But then I’d always had Winter.
And now I didn’t. Everything seemed so different without her. It was like I hadn’t really known how much real pain hurt until she wasn’t there to buffer me from it.
“I cried, too—when he let her die. Don’t feel ashamed.”
He went back to his own book, but I still felt ashamed. I finished the book as the light faded from gray to black outside. Tag had gone to make dinner, but I didn’t follow him to help. I finished reading instead, racing the sun to the last word on the last page.
I closed the book and hugged it to me with a sigh and a few sniffles.
“It grips the heart, doesn’t it?”
Startled, I whirled around to see his shadow leaning against the door frame. “You scared me.” I hurried to stand up.
“I should.” He smiled.
“Whatever.” My fingers ran over the spine of the book.
“Did you like it?”
I nodded and hugged the book to my chest a little tighter. “I don’t think I ever understood the greatness in such—” The word sacrifice hung on my tongue, but there was so much more to be learned from the story than simple sacrifice. I’d closed the pages shut and emerged a better person. I shrugged.
“Dinner’s ready.”
We ate by glow-stick light again. “How many of these things do you have left?” I asked.
“Enough. We leave tomorrow. You’ll have far better accommodations then. Better company, too.”
I appreciated that he’d made mashed potatoes and took a healthy serving. “I’m not complaining about my current company.”
“Not in the last few hours, but before that . . .” His lip quirked and his blue eyes seemed to be laughing at me. He passed me the pan of soup he’d made. It looked like some sort of vegetable stew and wasn’t too bad considering it had come from a can of dehydrated powder and chunks of vegetables.
“Well, don’t get comfortable. I might be complaining again later on.”
“I don’t doubt that.” He laughed.
“I’ve made a decision.”
He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “Do enlighten me.”
“That book, A Sliver of Midnight, it made me rethink some things. You might be right.”
“Did you just say that I might be right?”
“Don’t get excited. You’ll probably never hear me say that again. But for right now, at this moment, you might be right. You saved my life. I would have died in that car wreck, and you’ve given me a chance to do something different, to make the world a better place. I’ll give it a chance.”
“It’s amazing what a little reading will do,” he said, though he didn’t look as pleased by my decision as I thought he’d be.
We ate the rest of our meal while discussing books and movies. He’d explained that most movies were made by independents and had been that way since before crazy law had gone into effect. Hollywood was only recently making a comeback. He said the classics remained popular and everyone had movies from Hollywood’s glory days loaded into their IDRs.
We talked about music. For a while in recent history, keening unaccompanied solos were popular, but big band music had slowly crept in and taken over.
We talked about my mom, growing up, my aunt and her husband, and we talked about Winter.
I found myself listening intently for the things he didn’t say. He never talked about his own childhood except to mention briefly he’d grown up under the tutelage of Professor Raik. He never spoke about his own family, which made me naturally curious and ever determined to discover why he worked so hard to avoid those topics of himself. His family life couldn’t have been any worse than mine, and I was pretty open about the psychosis of my upbringing. Maybe his childhood was one of those ideal types with the mom who bakes, and the dad who plays catch with his kids after work. Maybe he just didn’t want to rub it in.
I sighed. It figured. Everyone’s childhood was decidedly better than the one Winter and I had endured.
We’d long since finished eating when we finally decided to get up, clean up, and go to bed. I was washing dishes when Tag said, “I’ll be right back.”
I continued on alone, putting the dishes I’d dried away, wondering what it might be like to just put a dirty dish back in the cupboard and open it back up to find it clean. No matter what Tag said, the idea seemed as farfetched as Aunt Theresa’s wishes and ponies. Wishes weren’t ponies, and dishes didn’t clean themselves in anybody’s world. Tag came back and finished cleaning the sink and wiping down the counters. Paul did that for Aunt Theresa when they did dishes together. It was on my list of cool things a husband should do—argh! What was I thinking? Comparing Tag to my list? Stupid!
Tag was one of the infected. He had a disease that rendered people incapable of having children. The last thing I wanted was to be waiting in line at a public nursery to pick up my crazy baby.
Besides, Tag had already declared he didn’t want anything to do with me in that regard. It seemed like he liked me, but not like that. Every time we were close in any cuddly way, he acted like I gave him a rash. And my
boyfriend had just died. Was I so calloused that I was already in the market for a new one? I sighed again.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. He rinsed the towel we’d been using then hung it to dry.
“What isn’t?”
“It’ll be okay. Everything will be fine, and you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.”
“Yeah. Tomorrow, my world will change—again.”
He smiled and wiped his hands on his jeans, the wet spots looking more silver against the black than they did normally. “Change is all we can count on.”
“Too bad mine’s all of the spare pocket variety.”
He looked confused, but I didn’t bother to explain myself. I only shrugged and followed him down the hall to the bedrooms. I moved to go to the room he’d assigned to me when he gently pulled back on my arm. “Not tonight.”
“What?”
“Let’s both of us get a decent night’s sleep tonight.” He led me into the room he’d claimed for himself. On the floor next to the bed was the mattress from my room.
I tried hard, and failed, to hold back my grin. “I’ve got to give you credit. This is brilliant.”
“Efficiency is hardly akin to brilliance.”
“Who are you kidding? Efficiency is everything like brilliance. So which one is mine?”
He looked offended that I’d even asked. His brows furrowed over those blue eyes, the ones I’d become used to, the ones I spent a good deal of time trying not to think about. “The bed is yours. As has become our custom, I will take the floor.”
“Well at least the floor looks a little more comfortable this time.” I hopped on my bed, curling my legs underneath me, and spreading my skirt so I stayed properly covered. “When do we leave tomorrow?” I asked.
His face fell from looking pleased to depressed. With only a few glow sticks for light, it was hard to tell if it was only shadows, or if he really was sorry to take me to this obscure future.
“At twelve thirteen p.m. And barring any more mishaps, tomorrow night you’ll be in the New Youth dormitory with your roommate. You won’t have to worry about sleeping alone.”